Newspaper subscriptions finally coming to iPad?

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There’s chatter in the media industry about Apple preparing to launch a new subscription service to sell digital newspapers on iPad. According to a report by MercuryNews.com, such a feature would require you to opt-in and allow Apple to share your information with publishers in the interest of advertising. That’s an industry norm, warned Roger Fidler, digital publishing chief at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute in Columbia:

Publishers want the data of their customers so they can integrate it into their circulation database so they know who their customers are.

Before iPad launched in April, the rumor-mill claimed print die-hards would sell newspaper subscriptions via iTunes. This never came to be, despite Apple’s numerous meetings that allegedly took place with key industry figures. It came down to a simple problem: publishers requested detailed information about every subscriber, but Apple refused to release it in order to protect the privacy of its credit card-using iTunes customers.

Major publishers would later announce a digital newsstand for platform-agnostic digital print products, but the effort has yet to yield any results. Meantime, magazine publishers are releasing their products on the App Store, like the digital Wired edition, which require readers to buy and download each edition as a separate app. In addition, 30 percent of each sale goes to Apple, like with any other apps sold on the App Store.

Newspaper publishers usually offer a free reader app that provide access to a limited selection of content. Readers can buy a subscription plan on a publisher’s website and feed their online credentials to an app which unlocks full content. This technique lets publishers bypass Apple and keep all the revenue to themselves while collecting subscriber information later used for marketing and advertising purposes.